Business travel to drop by at least 35%, warns airline boss

A leading UK airline boss has warned that business travel will not recover from the coronavirus pandemic to anything close to 2019 levels. Jonathan Hinkles, CE of Loganair, said: “We think in the medium term that probably only 60-65 per cent of business travel will recover. It will be 90%-plus for some sectors like construction, health care and others but probably only a 25-30% recovery across sectors like accountancy, consulting and others.” He said: “There used to be a rule of thumb that if a journey took more than four hours, people preferred to fly. That’s extended to six or seven hours now.” The Loganair CEO gave the example of the former Flybe links from East Midlands airport to Edinburgh and Glasgow. The flights of around 240 miles took an hour, compared with six hours by rail from Nottingham to Glasgow. Yet neither route appears viable in a post-Covid era.<br/>